BJP’s mission 272 accomplished, Cong routed; Modi, Advani win

The BJP-led NDA appears to be heading for a victory in the Lok Sabha elections with the trends in the counting of votes giving the saffron party leads in 257 seats on its own while its allies led in 39 seats.

The ruling Congress was struggling with leads only in 45 seats as per the trends available for 490 seats. Among its allies, NCP was ahead in five, Kerala Congress and RSP one each.

BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has won from Vadodara and was leading in Varanasi.

In Amethi, Rahul Gandhi was leading with 1666 votes and Congress President Sonia Gandhi was leading by over 56000 votes in Rae Bareli.

BJP has registered a remarkable comeback in Uttar Pradesh and it is leading in 54 seats. BSP was trailing massively and has registered leads in only three seats.

LK Advani won his seat in Gujarat and the BJP is looking to win all the 26 seats.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor is trailing from Thiruvananthapuram and BJP’s VK Singh is leading from Ghaziabad.

Buoyed by exit poll predictions, the BJP is keenly awaiting the results of the Lok Sabha elections. Votes polled in the nine-phased elections will decide who will form the next government.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is widely tipped to become the next prime minister with exit polls projecting BJP to emerge as the single largest party.

Nearly 8000 candidates, including top guns Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal were in the fray, in the largest-ever electoral exercise held in Indian history.

Lok Sabha elections 2014 witnessed the highest-ever turnout with 66.38 per cent of an estimated 814 million voters exercising their franchise — the highest ever in the history of general elections.

During the high decibel campaign marked by vitriolic accusations, Modi constantly targeted Rahul as ‘shehzada’ and the UPA dispensation as the ‘mother-son’ government besides going after Sonia’s son-in-law Robert Vadra over alleged land deals. He also hurled barbs at the UPA government, saying it represented the ‘ABCD’ of corruption, referring to Adarsh, Bofors and Coal scams. He also took a ‘RSVP’ jibe at the Nehru-Gandhi family, saying R stood for Rahul, S for Sonia, V for Vadra and P for Priyanka. He often ridiculed his rival parties for having a one-point “Stop Modi” agenda.

The BJP Prime Ministerial candidate also had his share of criticism with several leaders taking him on in connection with the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. The Trinammol Congress in West Bengal called Modi the “butcher” of Gujarat after he escalated his attack against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying there is no “poribartan” in the eastern state.

Sonia and Rahul put Modi in the crosshairs over alleged favours given to the Adani group in land deals and claimed that he favoured only select industrialists. Rahul hurled “balloon” and “toffee model” barbs at the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate.

The Congress also attacked Modi for constantly harping on Gujarat model of development, claiming there has been no development at all in the western state during his rule. Priyanka was also brought into the campaign by the Congress towards the later stages and managed to energise the cadres in UP. But she confined her campaign to Amethi and Rae Bareli.